The present invention relates to an information component management system. Specifically, the system of the present invention enables documents, images and other types of information to be packaged within an active information component object, which can then be stored, retrieved and manipulated according to content rather than according to form.
Both the amount and format of available information is increasing at a geometric rate. Individuals today face a plethora of choices, both of the type of information which can be obtained, and the method by which the information is obtained. For example, in addition to the traditional print media such as newspapers and magazines, a good deal of news information is available electronically, via the World Wide Web (WWW), through electronic computer mail, by dedicated electronic news services, through a facsimile machine or even on television. All of this information can be obtained relatively easily, yet finding particularly useful information is increasingly difficult if not impossible.
The many different information formats are themselves a source of increasing complexity for information management. Such management includes storing, searching and retrieving available information to find that small fraction which is useful to the user. For example, a particular news item might be available in a paper document, as a picture, from a video stream such as television broadcast, through a voice medium such as radio, or electronically on the World Wide Web. Currently available document management systems can only manage one or two of these formats, often requiring information to be translated from the original source format into a format available to the document management system. In addition, as its name implies, a "document" management system is still tied to the underlying characteristics of a "document".
Documents can be defined as a collection of ideas and information, which are organized within a certain structure. The ideas and information may be logically linked according to various relationships, but as a whole should follow a common theme. The collection itself is expressed as a combination of text and graphic items. There are three main types of information in a document: ideas, data and structure. Ideas can be expressed with words or graphics. Data can be in the form of numbers, symbols, graphics or even sounds. The final element, structure, is an important element of a document, yet it is often overlooked as a separate entity. The structure of a document is the way in which the data and ideas are organized within the document, thereby providing additional significance to these data and ideas.
Current document management systems typically fall into one of two categories. The first category is a structured management system. This system was originally designed to enable searches for information according to specific keywords within defined database fields. Unfortunately, this underlying system design has many disadvantages. For example, the types of performable searches are limited by the structure of the database itself. Furthermore, information must be extracted from the document and entered into the database manually, which is time consuming, expensive and prone to human error. Thus, structured management systems have significant drawbacks for document management.
The alternative category, non-structured retrieval systems, solves certain problems but also creates new difficulties. These systems enable automatic indexing of information, without the need for human intervention. However, in non-structured retrieval systems, only the free text of the document is automatically indexed. Therefore, only free text from the document can be searched. Although free text is an important component of a document, such a system loses the other types of available information. Furthermore, the context of ideas or concepts within a document is largely lost by the automatic indexing procedure, leaving the user with a collection of disconnected textual segments or documents which are divorced from the general theme expressed by the entire document. Thus, the user must often read an entire document or a collection of search results in order to find the desired information.
Therefore, there is an unmet need for, and it would be highly useful to have, an information component retrieval system which stores, manages and retrieves concepts and ideas rather than static documents or document portions.